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Perfume to release their 6th studio album in August

In an announcement, which was probably followed up with a fax (because Japanese media stay living in the 80s) Perfume will be releasing their sixth studio album this year and embarking on a nationwide 18 date tour. This comes as no surprise, as its been 2 years since their last tour and album and if they release any more singles with B-sides, there will be fuck all that's brand new by the time the album drops.

I would be excited about this if Perfume had their shit together. But their current string of singles have been dire, their last studio album (whilst not as much of a mess as it probably should have been given the singles) was a mess and the accompanying tour was underwhelming by Perfume's usually exceptionally high standards.

I find Perfume's marketing and PR team bizarre and downright rubbish. A new album and tour was to be expected, but the announcement comes with nothing. It's just an announcement in a period where Perfume haven't been doing a great deal and giving their fans much of anything. The only thing it was preceded by was their Reframe performance which was, as is always the case with Perfume, unnecessarily dragged out past the point of caring. When the edited performance hit YouTube, it was cool. But then to only broadcast the full thing 2 months later? Who the fuck even cares at that point!? And then to drop some dead ass press release with no new promo shot, no actual release date other than 'August' and a tour with no name?! Gurls, really!?

Perfume aren't as popular as they were a few years ago. And even if they were, they should be making announcements amidst a perfect storm of actual promo. Not off the back of some TV performance and some little dance that they did in some pyramid on a live stream 6 months ago.

Even the likes of Hikaru Utada makes sure that her announcements come in the midst of other shit. When she announced she was dropping a new album, she announced a tour, but then also dropped the bomb that her shit was hitting streaming services. A bitch also had one song doing the rounds in some Harry Potter and the prisoner of Henshin-Maebashi looking ass movie and a Sony earphones commercial AND a song in a Suntory water commercial. THEN a new Kingdom Hearts II Itrailer drops with another new song. We know damn well that we ain't gonna get shit from Perfume between now and August but dusty ass televised performances of "Mugen mirai".

I'm not holding my breath for a World tour 4th. Perfume's team have made it abundantly clear that they do not have a single fuck to give their global fanbase but some fancy website where you can submit a message that will get projected during some performance that you'll have to hit Youku to see.